tEACHING BLOG

A handful of summers ago, I spent a couple months as a volunteer teacher in Papua New Guinea (PNG). While there, our team discovered an incredible hesitancy for students to speak-up during class time, and when they did, it was barely louder than a whisper. I suspect there are some good reasons for this: English--the language of instruction--is the second (or third) language students learn; moreover, a number of cultural norms seem to encourage students to remain quiet. To combat this, I did an activity where I had my class simultaneous shout the answers to various questions.

In the American University, there also appears to be influences that discourage students from asking questions. Perhaps the most common one being the fear of asking a bad (i.e. 'stupid') question. This post is my attempt to combat it.

The irony is that instructors crave for students to ask questions--even the 'bad' ones--because they reveal what aspects of the lecture the students are understanding and what ideas haven't been communicated effectively yet. But this is precisely what the student is afraid of: that by asking a question they will reveal how much they don't know (i.e. how lost they are).

Of course, being a student is all about not knowing (that's why one is taking the course in the first place). When one signs up and attends a calculus course, it automatically signals the instructor that s/he doesn't know the material.

So the fear of asking questions can't be grounded in not knowing, for that's in a student's job description. Rather it seems the fear boils down to the other aspect of being a student: learning. The student may fear that asking questions reveals he/she is an ineffective learner. "If I ask about that, everybody will know I didn't understand it the first time."

A few points to consider:

First of all, instructors don't expect students to understand everything the first time through. In fact, they are banking on the fact that students don't. If students were expected to understand everything the first time they saw it, we could simply record a lecture once and show it to all future generations of students. But this isn't how learning works. Every classroom has a unique set of students that needs to have the content of a lecture uniquely tailored to them. It is the interplay of students asking questions and professors formulating responses that accomplishes this. Thus, asking questions lets the instructor know that he/she is valuable and can't simply be replaced with a video recording.

Secondly, questions benefit the class as a whole. Perhaps it is a question on a really simple step you missed, then a quick 20 second explanation by the instructor gets you (and probably the handful of other students with the same question) caught up. Note well: 20 seconds is a small price to pay to help guarantee you (and a handful of others) can understand the next 20 minutes. Alternatively, if it is a question that takes a longer explanation--such as understanding a complicated concept--this allows the instructor to explain it again from a slightly different perspective. This both benefits the other students who were confused as well as those who understood it fine the first time, but now have another way of looking at it. In short, everybody wins.

Thirdly, one's learning is more important than what people perceive about his/her ability to learn. One can either: (1) not ask questions out of fear of what others will think and get less out of a course; or (2) ask questions and learn more of the material. Honestly, choosing either (1) or (2) will probably make very little difference in one's social standing with his/her peers (I seldom remember who asked what last week); however, it will likely make a significant difference in his/her academic success.